Staff Rides as a Pedagogical Tool in Professional Military Education (PME): Planning and Conducting Historical Staff Rides
Volume 8, Issue 2 (2022), pp. 61–82
Pub. online: 25 October 2022
Type: Research Article
Open Access
Open Access
Received
7 May 2022
7 May 2022
Accepted
6 September 2022
6 September 2022
Published
25 October 2022
25 October 2022
Abstract
The use of various practical pedagogical tools is an important part of officer training. This is also an area where there is a long tradition in the training of officer cadets and officers in staff colleges as well as in the Armed Forces more generally. This article focuses on staff rides aimed at teaching tactics and operational arts based on historical examples. This type of staff-rides aims to learn from history with a bearing on the present and the future.
The article is organized as follows: first, the article gives a short overview of the history of staff rides, followed by a discussion on different types of staff rides. Then the focus shifts to ways to planning and carrying out a staff-ride. This includes the planning phase, reconnaissance, and the different pedagogical tools that can be used and their implementation. The article concludes with a discussion of how to think when planning and carrying out a staff rides, both practically and pedagogically. The article here presented a schematic model of the pedagogical dynamics of the staff ride for different target groups based on their pre-understanding and the complexity of different field exercises.
References
Notes
1. See Osperey Publishing. (2022) Browse by Series: Campaign. Available at:
https://ospreypublishing.com/store/military-history/series-books/campaign, Accessed: 15 September 2022
2. See Casemate Publishers. (2022) Homepage. A
vailable at: https://www.casematepublishers.com/,
Accessed: 15 September 2022.
3. Of course, digital aids such as Google Maps,
Google Earth and Google Street View can support planning, and both improve and streamline reconnaissance in many ways.
They also make it possible, for example, in a time-efficient way to find possible new venues and get a
reasonable picture of what they look like even beyond what the map says. Services like TripAdvisor and other
guides are also useful in this respect.
